Re: newbie questions

Mark Parker writes:

> First, is there a way to link the file in the database directory, which
> are all numbers, to specific databases?

contrib/oid2name

> Second, I've got some dbs that have some really huge files. A nightly
> vacuum (not full) is running.

Non-full vacuum does not shrink the table files on disk; it just remembers
the space for reuse. So you should try a full vacuum to see if things
shrink.

> I've been told that the way they've been getting the db back to a
> reasonable size was via the ps_dump, drop table, recreate table psql <
> dumpfile routing. Seems a bit excessive.

That could have been the case if the files concerned belong to an index.
In that case it's preferrable to try REINDEX.

--
Peter Eisentraut peter_e(at)gmx(dot)net